


13 Days of Halloween - Pumpkins

by BleedingInk



Series: Halloween Challenge [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F, alternative universe, gay bars, pumpkin patch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:41:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5045170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie is decided to throw a Halloween party for her friends, and she just happens to meet someone very special in the pumpkin patch. (Written for the 13 Days of Halloween Multishiping Challenge).</p>
            </blockquote>





	13 Days of Halloween - Pumpkins

“Come on, you guys!” Charlie said. “You need to get with the spirit!”

For her troubles, she received nothing but a collective groan.

In her opinion, it wasn’t her fault for being excited. Sam and Dean had inherited a house from their Uncle Bobby, and, deciding it was a nice place to live in, they had moved in there along with Jess, Sam’s fiancé, and Charlie, who was an honorary Winchester. No one had been more excited about that development than Charlie: she had lived in apartments her entire life, so she never had the chance to sit in the porch to drink tea or plant a garden or do whatever it was that people who had backyards did.

“Don’t get too attached,” Dean had warned her. “It’s only until Sam and Jess set a date, and then we’re leaving the place to them so they can make babies and bake apple pies.”

“And hopefully not the other way around,” Charlie said.

Dean hadn’t found the insinuation that his hypothetical nephews would be cannibalized funny, but Charlie knew he still loved her.

Still, that would probably be happening soon (Sam and Jess getting married, not eating their babies), so when October rolled around, Charlie decided she needed to make the most of this one in a lifetime opportunity and turn the house into the ultimate Halloween party scene.

“I’m sorry, Charles, I just think we’re a little too old to celebrate Halloween,” Jess said, sitting on the couch next to Sam. They both had that we’ve-worked-hard-today-so-please-can-you-just-let-us-watch-TV-in-peace look in their faces. In Charlie’s opinion, that was exactly the reason they had to celebrate Halloween.

“You are never too old for Halloween!” she exclaimed, horrified they would even suggest such a thing. “If you’re tired of Halloween, you’re tired of life itself.”

“That’s pretty much how I feel, actually,” Sam admitted. “It’s been a long day. Can we watch our show now?”

Charlie was decided to stand in front of the TV and hold the remote control hostage until she had got away with hers.

“Come on, you guys, you have the rest of your lives to be bored and old and married,” she pleaded. “Who knows, this time next year you could have a tiny brat that would need to be put to bed before nine and you definitely won’t have time to party then.”

Jess and Sam groaned, ready to protest they didn’t exactly had time to party then. Jess was keeping long hours at the hospital thanks to her internship, and the partners at Sam’s firm confused “newest associate” with “personal slave”. So yeah, it was clear they were tired and exploited, but Charlie was undeterred.

“Guys, just let her do it,” Dean said from the kitchen, tiredly. “She’s not going to let you live otherwise.”

“See, Dean is on my side!” Charlie said. “He voted yes. It’s a tie.”

Dean came out of the kitchen with a platter with three beers and a some tacos he had prepared.

“For the record, I didn’t vote yes,” he said, placing the platter in front of Sam and Jess. “I voted ‘let her do it so we can have some peace around here’.”

It worked for Charlie either way.

“Please!” she said, putting her hands together in a praying gesture. “Please, please, guys, I promise I’ll clean afterwards and everything, please!”

“If we say yes, are you going to let us watch our movie?” Jess asked, sighing tiredly.

Charlie just looked at her with what she hoped were pretty convincing puppy eyes. Jess turned to Sam, who sighed deeply.

“Alright, I guess…”

“Awesome!”

Charlie threw the control remote at him. It flew over Sam’s head because he was not fast enough to catch him, and there was another collective groaned when they realized one of them was going to have to get up to get it. But Charlie was too excited running upstairs and making a list of everything she was going to need:

“I have to buy decorations, and food! I’m going to have to check some sites for recipes… oh, and the pumpkins, can’t forget the pumpkins!”

“Something tells me we’re going to live to regret this,” Sam commented. Jess simply turned the TV on.

 

* * *

 

“Nah, kiddo,” Dean said. “This was your idea. You’re on your own.”

He should have been thankful that Charlie didn’t have anything in her hands, because it would have most likely ended flying at his face right then and there. Instead, she took a deep breath and sat down on the kitchen table, hoping that would make her seem more vulnerable and tiny to him. She didn’t know how exactly that would work, since Dean currently had his back turned on her while he washed the dishes, but it was worth the shot.

“Dean, this a simple favor I am asking of you,” Charlie said. “I have everything planned already, but I wasn’t counting on my car breaking down…”

“Catch a cab,” Dean shrugged.

“Are you serious?” Charlie groaned. “Do you have any idea how much money I’m already investing in this party?”

“Yeah, well, and who’s idea it was?”

Charlie wanted to scream at him that he had no idea how much time and energy she was throwing into this on top of the money. It wasn’t easy planning a party when her roommates kept constantly groaning and being generally uncooperative, and she was doing it for them, so they could have fun.

“No, you’re not,” Dean said when Charlie tried to argue that. “You’re doing to see how many of Jess’ classmates show up dressed in skimpy animal costumes.”

“I resent that implication, Dean Winchester,” Charlie replied, crossing her arms over her chest. “And if it was true – and it’s so not – what would be so wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” Dean replied, turning around to look at Charlie. “It’s just that you don’t so much have a gaydar as ‘ _Please be gay_ ’-dar. It can be awkward for everyone involved.”

“Statistically, one of them has to be lesbian,” Charlie replied, grumpily. “Or bi. Or… experimenting…”

Dean just watched her, waiting for her to realize just exactly how messed up it was what she was saying.

“Yeah, okay, maybe,” Charlie admitted. “But the spirit of Halloween is still my main concern.”

“Why don’t you just go to a gay bar?” he suggested. “You know, the kind of place where you’ll know for sure that other girls will be into you.”

“It’s easier said than done,” Charlie said, sadly. “Thanks to Glinda, I’m still banned from the Ruckus. And… pretty much from any another bar in the state.”

“Ah,” Dean crooked an eyebrow.

Of course he would think that he had reached the heart of the matter when Charlie’s ex-girlfriend was mentioned, but that was so not the case. It was about helping her friends have fun and celebrating Halloween and…

“You miss her, huh?”

“It’s not so much that I miss _her_ ,” Charlie replied, hating herself for letting herself get trapped into Dean’s psychoanalysis. “Our relationship was complicated and dysfunctional on good days. But I do miss the crazy adventures we used to go on together. And the sex. I definitely miss the sex.”

Dean kept looking at her, not making any comments.

“Look, if you’re waiting for me to have some sort of epiphany about my past relationship and the current state of my love life, you can save it,” Charlie declared, irritated. “I’m going to ask Jess for her car, and she’s going to say yes, because unlike you, she’s a good friend.”

“Save it,” Dean said. He took the keys of his Impala out of his pocket and threw them at Charlie, who almost stumbled on the table trying to catch them. “But I see one scratch on her…”

He was interrupted by Charlie’s super-excited and extremely tight hug.

“See? I knew you loved me.”

 

* * *

 

The pumpkin patch was only an hour’s drive away, but Charlie still left at an hour Dean qualified as “unnecessary early” because she was not willing to let anyone snatch all the best pumpkins.

“And when I come back, it’s going to be carving time!” she warned them the night before.

“Charlie, it’s Saturday,” Sam complained.

“And what better way than get rid of the week’s stress than a carving session?” Charlie replied, with a little shrug. “I expect everyone to have printed a pattern of their liking from the Internet.”

Her friends had groaned and protested some more, but they knew deep down that there was no stopping Charlie and her Halloween spirit. She knew they would get on with it eventually.

She parked outside the pumpkin patch and stopped for a moment to contemplate the rows and rows of shiny orange pumpkins extending underneath the sun. There were apparently a family or two walking about, but apart from them, the pumpkins were just waiting there for her to choose. She took a step forwards…

… and had to jump back, because an enormous truck almost runs her over.

“Hey!” she screamed, annoyed.

A girl and a guy that stepped out of the truck either didn’t see her or didn’t care. Another two descended from the trunk and the girl took out what appeared to be a list from the pocket of her flannel.

“Okay, we need thirty pumpkins at least,” she instructed them. “Try and get the biggest ones, and don’t drop any, because if you break them, we still have to pay them, am I clear?”

The three guys nodded, as serious as soldiers that had just received a deadly assignment, and scattered around the pumpkin patch faster than Charlie could blink.

“Hey!” she protested again, because how the hell was she supposed to compete with those guys?

The truck driver turned towards her.

“Sorry, did I park too close?” she asked. “Nice ride, by the way.”

Charlie opened her mouth to tell her how it was rude to almost run over people and then steal their pumpkins. But it just so happened that the girl pulled her aviator glasses over her head, and oh, God, how was it even possible for someone to have such clear blue eyes?

“I… uh… well, I…” Charlie stuttered. She was staring, she was staring and it was weird, and the girl would probably now walk away from her, why the hell did she have to so awkward…?

But she didn’t walk away. She just looked at Charlie, tilting her head a little, and then smirked with those very small lips she had.

“Did the cat eat your tongue, Red?”

Charlie knew that was her chance to make a recovery, so she took a deep breath and went for it.

“It’s… not my ride, it’s my friend’s,” she clarified, although in her mind there was a voice shouting at her that this Autumn Goddess that had appeared before her with her long legs and her olive skin and her long brown hair falling over shoulders didn’t really care about that kind of issues. “And he’s… kind of hysterical about it, so… yeah, you’re parked kind of close and if you scratch it…”

“No problem, I’ll move it,” the girl said with a little shrug, and strode towards the driver’s seat. “By the way, I love your shirt.”

Charlie looked down at her Princess Leia shirt, and then back at the girl who was already climbing again on her truck. And suddenly, she understood what Dean meant by her “please-be-gay”-dar.

In any case, she did not need a new relationship at that exact moment. Those pumpkins weren’t going to pick themselves.

She probably wasn’t going to pick them either, because fifteen minutes she found the girl again when their hands graze while they both reached for the same perfectly round pumpkin. Charlie literally felt her knees gave in when she smiled at her again.

“Hello, again, Red,” she greeted her.

“Uh… hi…” Charlie muttered. Well, she definitely had the smoothness of a potato that day.

“You can have that one,” the Autumn Goddess said, moving her away. “There’s plenty around.”

“Uh… yeah…” Charlie said. Oh, God, she needed to up her game, but it was really hard when looking at Autumn Goddess directly, so she pretended to look down at the pile of pumpkins to pick another one. “I heard you’re trying to take like, all of them, though…”

“Yeah,” she laughed, and Charlie was pretty certain she hadn’t heard anything quite that adorable in a while. “Got a big inaugural party coming up. Well, it’s more like a re-inauguration, actually. I always wanted my own bar and I recently bought this place… I’m sorry, I must be boring you.”

“No!” Charlie assured her, a little too fast for it not to be weird. “I mean, no,” she said, after clearing her throat and glancing at the Autumn Goddess again. “Not at all. So… what kind of place is your bar?”

“Just… a bar,” Autumn Goddess shrugged and put a pumpkin aside. “It used to be called the Ruckus. I don’t know if you heard about it.”

“Oh,” Charlie said. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. Been, even… a couple of times.”

Wait, did that mean she was gay? She had a gay bar, but maybe she bought it without knowing it was a gay bar? Maybe she wasn’t, but she didn’t car having a place were gay people could meet? Oh, God, this was so confusing.

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about renaming it, too,” Autumn Goddess continued, completely nonchalant about the fact Charlie had been at that bar. “Something… I don’t know, Oz-themed.”

Gay, Charlie thought with both relief and euphoria. Definitely gay.

“That’d be so cool,” Charlie smiled, suddenly recovering her confidence. “You could name it… The Emerald City.”

“Yeah,” Autumn Goddess replied, pointing a finger at Charlie. “Or maybe… The Yellow Brick Road.”

“Oh, oh… Ruby Slippers,” Charlie suggested.

“Dorothy’s Friends,” the girl snorted. “That would be wordplay, because my name is actually Dorothy. What’s yours?”

“Oh, you can’t make an Oz wordplay with my name.”

“Okay, but I still want to know it,” Dorothy laughed. “How else am I supposed to write you up for the VIP list?”

Charlie had never in her life been hit on and invited to a party so smoothly _at the same time_ , and she couldn’t help but to be completely baffled and fascinated.

“I’m Charlie,” she introduced herself, offering her hand.

“Well, nice to meet you, Charlie,” Dorothy said. Her shake was strong and warm. “I really hope I’ll see you there.”

“What day is it?”

“Halloween, of course,” Dorothy replied. “It’s a good excuse to make it a costume party. Also, if you’re tired of Halloween, you’re tired of life.”

“That’s what I keep telling my killjoy friends!” Charlie exclaimed.

Dorothy’s smile was bright enough to light up the entire town.

“So you’ll come, then?”

“Absolutely,” Charlie replied. She only remembered to act cool when it was too late, but she didn’t think Dorothy cared. “Oh, but you should know… the previous owner sort of… banned me. It’s a long story.”

Dorothy crooked an eyebrow, but she didn’t press her for details.

“Well, there’s a new sheriff in town, and I'm officially unbanning you,” she declared. “It’d be a shame not to have your pretty face around.”

 

* * *

 

Jess, Sam and Dean were calmly watching TV, enjoying their perfectly normal Saturday when Charlie walked in dragging a bag of pumpkins behind her, dropped it in the carpet and turned it off.

“Oh, come on!”

“We were watching that!”

“I have an announcement,” Charlie said with her very serious face, ignoring their protests. “Something has come up for me to do on Halloween, so I will no longer be hosting the party. I’m sure you’re disappointed, and I’m sorry.”

The three of them exchanged confused looks.

“Yeah, so disappointed,” Dean said.

“Bummer,” Sam added.

“But I’m… sure we’ll find a way to… survive,” Jess added.

“Please, do,” Charlie said. Then she grinned. “Hey, but we still get to carve pumpkins together! I’ll wait for you at the kitchen!”

She struggled to pick up the bag of pumpkins again and disappeared behind the door.

“Nothing ever fazes her, does it?” Jess asked.

“Nope,” Dean confirmed. Sam turned the TV back on.


End file.
